Vítor Martinho (p)

The objective of the study presented here is to analyse the relationships between the dimensions of the forest fires (burnt area) and the output, meaning the gross value added for the total municipality economy and for the sector composed of agricultural, forestry and fishing across the Portuguese municipalities, over the period of 2004-2012.
First, the Spearman’s rank correlation was considered to analyse the relationship between these two variables (burnt area and output). Then causality was examined, and finally, the variables were regressed through endogenous covariate, three-stage least-squares regression.
The data analysis shows that the interior of Portugal witnessed a decline in population over the last several decades with several implications, primarily in land abandonment. Over the last several years, several farms were abandoned, and consequently represented an increased fuel load in the rural zones, increasing both the severity and the dimensions of forest fires in the area. In the last several years, the dimensions of the fuel load were one of the most important factors in the number of hectares burnt in Portugal.
The correlation analysis reveals that there is no relationship between forest fire severity (as measured by total burnt area in hectares) and the total municipality output and that there is a negative and moderate correlation between the burnt area and the output for the agricultural and forestry sector. These findings reveal that the greater impact of the forest fires in Portugal is in activities from the primary sector, a significant portion of which is developed in the rural Portuguese zones.
Our analysis of the causality between the burnt area and the output for the agricultural and forestry sector implies a bidirectional causality through well-known processes defined in the economic literature as circular and cumulative phenomena as part of a framework where the two variables are self-reinforced by each other in a positive or negative relationship. Contexts in which this bidirectional causality is present deserve special attention from the public institutions, especially as those institutions develop policies that can interrupt these self-reinforced phenomena.
The regressions with endogenous variables show that, indeed, there is a negative relationship between the two variables, where when the output for the agricultural and forestry sector decreases by ten thousand euros, the burnt area increases around 1.7 ha. It seems that is stronger the impact of the fires in the economics dynamics than the inverse.

"Acknowledgments
This work is financed by national funds through FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia, I.P., under the project UID/Multi/04016/2016. Furthermore we would like to thank the Instituto Politécnico de Viseu and CI&DETS for their support.".

Leana Reinl (p), Felicity Kelliher , David Aylward

In the western world, a substantial proportion of the population live in rural locations and National and European development plans regularly refer to the use of economic resources and in particular, local business engagement to help facilitate sustainable rural development in these communities. However, research into how rural businesses engage with each other in order to facilitate such development over time is less advanced. Micro firms, those businesses with less than ten employees, dominate the membership profile of rural networks established for local business activity through collaborative intention in the literature. These networks are characterised by strong social ties and are often critiqued for being narrowly embedded in their localities to the detriment of external actor engagement and ultimately, sustainable development. Brokers, as central network actors, cultivate social ties between others within and outside of their network and are often credited for the success of local rural networks. However brokerage is poorly understood in a rural micro firm network context. Taking a social network perspective, this paper seeks to address this gap and draws on Granovetter’s (1973) strong and weak tie concepts, and Burt’s work on brokerage (1992; 2000; 2005) to explore social ties and broker influence on sustainable rural micro firm network relationships.

An interpretive multi-case study methodology focuses on rural micro firm networks operating in the tourism sector at a local level to answer the questions: How are social ties used and activated in a rural network? What influence does the broker role have on rural micro firm network relationships? The authors study three case environments at varying degrees of network evolution in pursuit of the research question; (1) a newly formed ‘manufactured’ network facilitated by a regional tourism actors, (2) an established organic network grown from within the rural business community, and (3) an evolved network with a separately brokered sub-group. Differences in stage of network development permit insights into the evolutionary dynamics of social network ties specific to the rural network setting. Findings based on the multi-case data highlight particular relational tie configurations, which are challenging for brokering sustained network interaction. Essential broker activities varied between the networks at different stages of evolution and key broker competencies in line with stage of network development are noted. Collectively, these findings contribute to network broker theory and the time dynamic underpinning the stages of network evolution in a rural micro firm setting.